About

Bright Summer Night

NZ$ 25,440

pledged of NZ$ 20,000 goal

450

backers

Millennials arrived at the party too late - our world is on the brink of environmental catastrophe, and we continue to deny it. Bright Summer Night brings together a motley group of teenagers at a house party in the bewildering heat of New Zealand summer. Break-ups, new love, drugs, and amateur theatre all make this one chaotic event as the characters attempt to forget their issues, whether personal or global.

The storyline is inspired by William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but the modern setting re-contextualises the play’s themes of escapism, environmentalism, sexuality, and consent. Just like the world they live in, we see some of the characters are determined to keep dreaming; putting off tomorrow to indulge in the night.

We’ve shot a sample scene from Bright Summer Night to show the tone and feel we’re creating. It’s not a full episode, but a taste of the style of the series. Watch the video in the link above.

Please Note: This video was originally created for the pitch to NZ On Air in order to capture the tone of the potential series of ‘Bright Summer Night’. The scene, and the actors featured in this video and in promotional material may not be the final actors for these parts in the webseries.

We’ll be returning to YouTube next year with our third Shakespeare-inspired webseries Bright Summer Night, based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. For this series we will be working with experienced producer Bevin Linkhorn, and the wonderfully talented Robbie Nicol (White Man Behind A Desk). We are moving away from the in-world-camera style of storytelling, so we can explore different ways of portraying a story on screen. We want to make BSN a beautifully crafted webseries, above the standard of our previous projects. To be able to do this we require a bigger budget than we’ve had before and while we’re excited, we’re also incredibly nervous!!

We want to be straight up with you guys. We have already been granted $100,000 from NZ on Air funding towards the project, which is a vote of confidence from the New Zealand funding agency in the work that we're making. However our ambition for Bright Summer Night costs more than what we've been awarded, so we need to raise further money from other sources to ensure we can make the series we want. This is where you come in; you blew us away last Kickstarter! We're wondering if you guys can do it again, so we can make Bright Summer Night the very best it can possibly be. We will honestly be so grateful for any money you give us and we do not take any of this for granted.

Our ambitions are big for our new series. We're taking a step up to make drama drama - not just the vlogging style of NMTD and LLL. This gets us a little bit closer towards our goal of continuing to make awesome content for people to enjoy. Bright Summer Night will be our jobs for a good part of the next year. Up until now we've been able to make our series through the generosity of friends, family, and supporters; but it's time for us to start paying our cast and crew for their involvement in our work. And that takes money. We are incredibly grateful the NZ content funding agency NZ On Air supported our application, but that contribution doesn't meet our total budget.

We're hoping you can help us! We've got some stellar rewards to offer you in return for your support, including some old favourites.

We have yet to cast or begin writing Bright Summer Night, so rest assured we will keep everyone updated on the progress of our latest project through social media.

Maude Morris (Almost Love) wrote the original version of Cloud Control and you can hear her singing it on BandCamp.

Reuben Hudson performing an original song for Lovely Little Losers. You can check out more of his music on his YouTube channel or on BandCamp.

You may notice that some of the similar rewards we had available last year have gone up in price, this is because the actual time or cost of creating them was more than we had expected them to be. Eeek. To remedy this, we had to adjust how much we had them available for. Speaking of rewards, we have not forgotten that we have a few of these from LLL (especially stretch goals) left to deliver to you guys! We’re hoping that we’ll be able to get more of them out by early next year so please don’t worry that we’ve forgotten, we will deliver what we’ve promised.

Let’s talk STRETCH GOALS!!

Fully funded ($20,000): A Q&A with The Candle Wasters

$30,000: A video of the NMTD/LLL cast/crew lip-syncing along to a song from Lovely Little Losers.

$50,000: An unreleased video from the filming of Nothing Much To Do where Bea and Ben sing a cover of a song together.

$100,000: We will live stream a reading of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with the BSN cast/crew.

Where will the money we raise go?

We've got a production budget for Bright Summer Night that keeps costs to a minimum, but recognises the work that our collaborators put into the series.

Cost breakdown for Bright Summer Night

In Summary:

We’re trying a whole lot of new things with Bright Summer Night. We’re making something we’ve not tried before, while keeping roots in Shakespeare. We’re super excited to get started on telling the story of the BSN characters and hope you all enjoy it!

Risks and challenges

We are committed to finishing Bright Summer Night and releasing it to the world in July 2016. We're also surrounding ourselves with a few industry professionals to help guide us through this new step we're taking - that will lower our risk of total failure (aaaah!) !

You will be able to follow our progress through early stages of writing, filming and post-production via our social media. We'll be upfront with you if we're finding any aspects of the production hard. We know BSN is going to challenge us, but we're up for it. It'll be hard work and we'll be making it the best we can possibly make it.

A challenge for us has been the delivery of some of the rewards from our previous Kickstarter (for LLL). Some of those rewards haven't been able to be delivered just yet because we have to balance their release with that of Lovely Little Losers. But we will be fulfilling them all! (and we are more prepared for reward releases with the BSN Kickstarter)

We're super keen to be taking on this new project. And we invite you to join the party!

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge NZ$ 30 or more
About $21

SNAIL MAIL: Physical postcard featuring a picture of the LLL cast and crew from filming of LLL OR of a pixelated LLL character. Signed by as many of the NMTD/LLL cast and crew as we can secure. Plus a fantastic webseries.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge NZ$ 60 or more
About $41

POSTCARD PACK: A collection of 8 postcards featuring both LLL end of day shots and pixel characters, that you can use to send to your friends and family. These will not be signed by the LLL cast/crew. Plus a fantastic webseries.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge NZ$ 70 or more
About $48

SCRIPT-A-LICIOUS: Access to the script for the first episode of 'Bright Summer Night'. Printed and signed by The Candle Wasters and available actors. This would not be sent out till after the first episode has aired. Plus a fantastic webseries.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge NZ$ 350 or more
About $240

WA-SALLY TAKE TWO - Sally will draw two characters from NMTD or LLL of your choice. She also welcomes you to provide a situation for the character's to be in as inspiration. Plus a fantastic webseries.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge NZ$ 350 or more
About $240

CAND-ELSIE TAKE TWO - Elsie will draw two characters from NMTD or LLL of your choice. She also welcomes you to provide a video or two you enjoyed seeing the characters in as inspiration. Plus a fantastic webseries.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge NZ$ 500 or more
About $343

LIKE-A-LINE: Nominate a line from Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', tell us why you love it, and we will incorporate it into one of the episodes of 'Bright Summer Night'. It might be in artwork, in speech, in music... you'll find out! You will also be credited for the line. Plus a fantastic webseries.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge NZ$ 600 or more
About $412

LLLETTERMAN JACKET: A personalized letterman jacket as worn by the Messina High graduates in 'Lovely Little Losers'. You get to choose what will be written on the back of the jacket (eg. 'QUEEN BEA', 'ALL ROUND GREAT GUY'). Personalizing a letterman is a limited offer to Kickstarter backers only. We will have letterman jackets available as merch but you will be unable to personalize them. Plus a fantastic webseries.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge NZ$ 1,500 or more
About $1,030

COSTUME PIECE: You will get an original item as worn by one of the character’s in 'Bright Summer Night'. You may nominate a character from 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' that you would like an item from, but you may not end up with something from that character. Plus a fantastic webseries.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge NZ$ 1,600 or more
About $1,098

EXTRA EXTRA: Be an extra in 'Bright Summer Night', and join the cast/crew of the show for lunch. You must be Wellington-based (or able to get yourself to Wellington for the shoot). Plus a fantastic webseries.